


A Caterpillar's Paean to a Nighttime Butterfly

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [71]
Category: The Night Before (1988)
Genre: Astronomy, BBW, Bugs & Insects, Butterflies, Caterpillars, Childhood Friends, Childhood Sweethearts, Choices, College, Dancing, F/M, First Kiss, John Hughes-ish, Kissing, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Stories, Love Triangles, Moonlight, Moths, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Overweight, Pining, Popularity, Prom, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Sex, Slow Dancing, Soulmates, Star Gazing, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Teenage Drama, Teenagers, Transformation, Virginity, Weight Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: Winston Connelly finds himself torn between his new love, Tara Mitchell, and the chubby childhood friend he left behind to transform into someone both popular and accepted.As the date nears for his first year at college, he finds himself wondering if he lost more than he possibly ever suspected by transforming the night before...
Relationships: Winston Connelly (The Night Before)/Me, Winston Connelly/Tara Mitchell (The Night Before)
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [71]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Comments: 12
Kudos: 8





	1. Longing to Return to the Pupa

**Author's Note:**

> While writing the entry for "The Night Before" to my "A Love Letter to Keanu" series I was left with having a sad or a happy ending. Both were inside of my head and viable. I went with the sad ending but decided to turn it into its own sub series and write an entry from Winston's perspective...
> 
> One with a *happy* ending.
> 
> So whether you like your endings sad or happy, you have a choice now. ;D <3
> 
> Oh, but I insist you read part 1 first if you read this one. Thank you! :D <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winston gets a demand from a lover and request from a forsaken friend.

Guilt was the first emotion Winston Connelly felt whenever he saw Erin following his transformation from dweeb to social butterfly.

Hanging out with Tara and her friends in the food court at the mall, laughing and generally having a good time, when his girlfriend wasn't contradicting him that was, he'd catch a glimpse of Erin's large but graceful body moving amongst the different stores, most usually book or toy related, and he would feel his face flush and hear his voice falter.

The woman whom had been his best friend from early childhood until just before prom night would be wandering around aimlessly or simply standing there, her hands usually holding a bag, looking so lost and lonely that his heart would break a little and several memories would scatter across his mind like the stars in the night sky they once used to gaze at together.

Then Winston would realize, their eyes having met for one uncomfortable second, that part of his feelings was not guilt at all but an odd attraction that he had never previously associated with his shy and overweight friend before. She suddenly seemed like the glow of the flashlight which used to draw the moths to it on their long ago stargazing nights. It was those same moths that used to annoy him endlessly because Erin would almost spend just as much of her attention on them, telling him that the cloth devouring insects lived and moved on earth, doing more for the people on it than just looking pretty like the planets and stars which fascinated him, besides the sun and moon.

Having transformed into the admired creature that he now was, Winston would find himself wishing to return to his previous state and the friend he had left behind.

But things did not de-evolve, he told himself. Stars did not resume their former place in the heavens once they had fallen nor did butterflies spin back into their chrysalis and turn back into caterpillers.

Winston then would try his best to ignore the fat girl and just wait for her to go away, focusing on new friends of which his beautiful lover was the center.

He only wished that Erin would leave so that his feelings of discomfort and confusion would go away and he could continue to be the cool guy that had finally won Tara Mitchell's heart and her perfect, sexy, thin body.

Soon, though, he started to realize that he, himself, was the only reason she was loitering around in the first place and then Winston Connelly would feel even more drawn to the woman.

And even more guilty.

* * *

"So have you picked it up _yet_?" Tara Mitchell asked from the other end of the phone while her boyfriend sat on the edge of his bed in a bedroom cluttered with cardboard boxes. Her voice had returned to its prissy and stuck up tone after having been wonderfully absent the week following their misadventures on prom night.

"I haven't gotten around to it," Winston had replied, shifting the phone in his hand. "I've been too busy packing."

In truth, he had enjoyed getting away from the girl. Recently his irritation had been skyrocketing any time he had been in her presence and he was starting to feel that having to leave for college had come right in time. If he didn't get a break, Winston knew he was liable to do something crazy like breaking up with her. But such a move was certifiable.

Who actually got the girl of their dreams to wind end up calling it quits so soon afterwards?

He heard a loud sigh on the other end of the phone. "Seriously Winston!" Tara exclaimed. "We only have a few more nights for _you_ to get it right! I am _not_ about to let Lisa know how tedious it's all been."

Winston Connelly frowned, not ready for another lecture. " I'll try to get it soon, all right!" he snapped.

"I was hoping you'd have it by tonight for our date," Mitchell whined, preparing the usual tactic that almost always worked on her doting father when she was after something. "But if you don't care about me, if you don't _love_ me enough to want to make it just as good as Lisa says it can be, maybe we should just...

"Fine!" Winston conceded before she suggested ending their relationship. "I'll get the damn book!"

"Great," she cooed and he could almost picture the gorgeous brunette gloating inside of her perfect little bedroom, the one she'd helped him sneak into late at night once or twice. "Meet you tonight at Anthony's, Winnie," she said before hanging up.

Winston was left cringing over her pet name for him, sitting and listening to the dial tone which was less irritating than her spoiled voice. Almost slamming the receiver down, the boy soon rose in his pair of tight jeans and resumed the task of packing. Not that there was much left to bring with him. His new wardrobe, one consisting of similar jeans and new t-shirts, had mostly been all packed away.

Most of the other stuff he didn't need anymore.

Not having touched his telescope in days and having similarly sworn off the rest of his physics equipments and maps of the sky, he was leaving them to the bedroom he would be abandoning soon also. Not that he hadn't already forsaken them, Winston mused, guiltily thinking of Erin.

When he heard the doorbell ring and saw his mother appear at his bedroom door informing him it was the same old friend, the man had to resist the urge to believe he had summoned her somehow.

"She wants to see you," Mrs. Connelly stated, glaring at him in motherly disapproval.

"Well maybe I _don't_ want to see her!" he replied, firing a book into a box and exhaling in frustration after seeing it was one by Carl Sagan and therefore unneeded or desired.

Mrs. Connelly folded her arms and bestowed upon him the withering gaze she had reserved when she'd wanted him to do something he really did not want to.

"I have boxes to pack and a date with Tara tonight. I'm too busy to see her."

The older woman had sighed in frustration. "Look, Winston Connelly, I doubt very much she's going to ask you to go to the moon with her! Maybe she just wants to say goodbye. Wouldn't it be nice to say goodbye to your best friend before you go off to college?"

Kicking the box away, Winston exhaled in annoyance and ran his fingers through his hair. Having Tara pester him about picking up a book which only insulted his male pride, while having his mother scold him like he was still only four years old and, on top of it all, being forced to see a female childhood friend whom looked at him like he had died somehow was making him seriously not be a fan of the female gender of the species. Monkhood seemed like a good choice but then he'd probably wind up finding out that God was a woman too and that the universe he had ditched was laughing at him in malicious spite.

"Okay," Winston groaned. "But if this goes badly, I don't have to write you _once_ after I reach Cambridge."

He brushed past the woman he regretted having spent nine months inside the womb of and scowled, descending the stairs in fuming outrage. Walking to the front door, he found Erin standing there looking about a second away from leaving until she saw him. Winston wished he had been late by second. She was wearing her Daffy Duck t-shirt, the one she used to wear and make him laugh by saying " _Mother_ " in the fowl's own distinct tone and voice. Her chubby legs were clad in black pants and on her sweet face was a look of hopeful hopelessness. It was her kind and pretty sad eyes which got to him the most, however, and he hated looking into them as he asked, "Hi Erin. How have you been?"

She looked as if she wanted to say something incredibly personal but only replied with a simple, "Okay."

"So what's this about?" he asked in impatience.

"I have a book in at the library," she answered, her voice slightly fearful sounding. "Mom's away. Could you drive me there?"

He didn't like the way she made him feel like his old self. It made his new skin feel too ill-fitting somehow, like a jacket you wore for a while before you realized you never felt completely comfortable in it and you found yourself longing for the other one you had given away to the goodwill store. Staring at Erin was like seeing that old jacket and remembering how much you used to enjoy wearing it but never could again.

"Is it really _that_ important?" he asked, picturing the uncomfortable drive with the woman where he would constantly fight falling back into a role he had escaped from during his transformation into something far more evolved. Having to explain to Tara why he was seen driving with another girl, especially one it had long been assumed he had been sleeping with, was also far from appealing.

He was sure Erin was about to say no when his mother walked behind him, coughing in accusal.

Winston looked at Erin and frowned. "Okay," he surrendered. "Just let me get the keys."

* * *

The drive to the library in his brand new sports car was almost unbearably painful. Erin kept trying to get a conversation going but he couldn't make it actually go anwhere. Words were hard to find in her defeated company and even harder to let escape. In a way, it served her right, he thought smugly in the back of his mind. Throughout their friendship, she'd place two cute, plump fingers on his lips in order to let him know that he had been talking too much. Now that he was silent, it was almost bringing her to tears.

He found a parking space at the front of the library and frowned noticing how dark it was becoming and that he'd be late for meeting Tara at the fancy five star restaurant she had made reservations for about two weeks before if he wasn't careful. Remembering what their plans were for after the meal, Winston scowled and took the keys out from the ignition. "Tara said I should check out a book. So, while I'm here..."

He tried to climb the stairs and not get too close to his childhood companion, feeling that a space should physically exist between them as it did mentally and emotionally. The woman by his side belonged to some earlier stage of his existence, after all. He had since emerged from the chrysalis and flown away from her. Their pasts were shared but not their futures.

Leaving her behind at the counter, Winston recalled the workings of a man named Dewey Decimal and found the section he was after. It was a decidedly more adult one than the one that Erin and he used to visit together when they had been younger. Browsing the long line of books, Connelly found the particular book he was after and swallowed heavily as he grabbed it.

Returning to the front desk, he saw Erin waiting shyly on the other side of the library's large glass doors. She looked just as sweet as she always did. Too overweight to be considered anywhere near Tara Mitchell's ravishing beauty, she was still somehow no less adorable for it. Her long, curly brownish auburn hair looked almost red under the light and there was an expression on her face that was so sad she looked almost like some Victorian painting of a tragedy. He admired her like some patron at a museum without her knowledge and while the librarian checked out the book to him. Winston told himself he was only doing so to avoid the librarian's possibly harsh and judgemental stare but knew that it was all a lie. He had missed seeing his friend's gentle face, which had always brought him peace. To avoid seeing condemnation in her own soft eyes, he safely hid the book under his arm on the side away from her.

It was with regret then that he lost his hold on it suddenly and he watched in horror as it fell down and landed cover up on the step before them both. Winston hoped that maybe she would not see the title but knew that the hope was foolish.

 ** _"Joy of Sex,"_ **could probably be easily read by the man in the moon.

He rushed to retrieve the damn thing, thinking with shame of his sex life with Tara Mitchell. It wasn't exactly working out for them, he silently lamented. It had never occurred to him before that you could have the right parts and have them fit perfectly together and for something to still be missing. Because they both were finding the whole experience _lacking_ , Tara had suggested he get the sex manual to find out what he was doing wrong. As if the fact that she just lay there worrying about breaking into a sweat, didn't have _anything_ to do with it.

Knowing that Erin had seen the book, Winston Connelly could not bring himself to look up at her. Feeling his face turning red, knowing that the unpopular woman's opinion still meant an inexplicably great deal to him, he walked away from her in his too tight jeans back to his flashy sports car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm still worrying on and off if you would actually like me. I guess, I'm more worried about it because I wouldn't be a yes girl with you and go along with everything you do or say. I'm worried that makes me less of a fan but I couldn't just bury my feelings and play pretend. I would have to make up my own ideas about things.
> 
> That doesn't mean I'd be overtly critical though. I'm not a nag and I would be a supportive friend even if I thought something was a misstep. I'd just have to be myself. Any other way would mean that you didn't like me for who I am. 
> 
> Which, still, is somebody that loves you very much.
> 
> To word it all in a different way...
> 
> While researching this fic, I found out that some female moths don't actually fly; some only exist to mate and some are wingless. I would want a pair of wings, Keanu. Not to fly away from you but rather so I could fly by your side and see things the way that you see them, even if I don't always agree. I would want the same from you too.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	2. The Different Weight of the Wings of Insects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winston suffers an uncomfortable drive back to Erin's house during which his car stops.

On the drive back home, Erin was more quiet than she had been on the way to the library. She kept staring out the window and Winston was left worrying in silence about what she was thinking about as she gazed at passing cars and opening bars. They had never really talked about sex during their entire friendship. Perhaps it was their different sexes, but beside him confessing his romantic feelings for Tara Mitchell or several other women the topic had never really been discussed or even neared.

When he'd started having his first wet dreams and erections it wasn't exactly something he felt comfortable with bringing up. And the few boners he'd almost gotten when they'd been watching a Fall Guy episode together and Heather Thomas had come on the screen had been sucessfully averted or hid.

He thought of Erin's own puberty and realized only now that she had primarily kept that to herself also. He'd only found out that she'd started menstruating when she hadn't been able to go swimming with him and the news had only made him queasy.

 _"Period, Winston!"_ he heard Tara correct his word choice inside of his head. _"She got her period! You've got to keep those scientific words solely for your Doctor's practice, okay?"_

He pushed his bossy girlfriend to the side and tried to keep his focus on Erin and her sexuality instead. Even the fact that she had gotten her breasts had kind of gone over his head due to the fact that she had always sort of had them because of her weight. It wasn't anything new so it hadn't hit him as strongly as when the other girls in class had started developing and he had been all eyes.

He threw a glance at them now and noticed that they were indeed larger. Quite large actually. It was just that so was the rest of her. That might have been another reason why he hadn't noticed them other than the few times they had brushed against his arm and he had needed to deal with his pubescent body's perfectly normal reaction. Thinking about it now, those had been even more difficult to handle than Heather Thomas...

Not liking the direction his thoughts were turning any more than his discarded friend's silence, Winston Connelly decided it was probably best to try to throw himself into the type of conversation he had been deflecting on the previous drive if only to save himself from his private contemplations.

"So are you going to college, Erin?" Winston asked, his hand on the wheel and his shoulders too tense to escape her notice.

"You know mom can't afford it," she reminded him.

Ever since the Smyth's father had abandoned them, the family had been struggling to make ends meet. Still, Erin had often confessed her hopes that she could find a way to get into college.

"I thought maybe that art scholarship had..." he remarked.

"No. It didn't."

His heart sank for her then, splitting and falling straight down into his shoes. The organ didn't sit in them too well either over the fact that they were Nike and worth a small fortune. That atrocious cost only caused his guilt to flare even more. Winston remembered a time when he used to prefer what ever was on sale; to be specific, the time before he had started dating Tara Mitchell. Then everything had started to be weighed by how much it was worth. Another reason why he had left his overweight and impoverished friend behind for Tara's more uppercrust, rich ones. "I'm sorry," he said to his passenger and truly meant it.

"Is Tara going to the same college as you?" Erin asked and he replaced his guilt with annoyance at her unwanted invasion of his privacy.

"No," Winston replied. "She's staying here while I go East."

He paused, thinking of the book by his side and Tara Mitchell's inviting body, one that would _not_ be easily available for him once he went to Boston. "That's why we have to spend all our time together."

The fat girl frowned and asked, "Are you still majoring in physics?"

Having feared the question, Connelly shifted, not excited by the answer he had to give.

"You are, _right_?" she asked, genuinely concerned.

"No," he eventually replied. "Tara thinks it would be best if I went into medical science."

Erin exhaled in anger.

" _What_?" Winston turned and demanded. He had spent weeks trying to convince himself that he was making the right choice. Now that his childhood friend seemed to be as upset over it as he secretly was, he felt his defiance flaring.

She looked on the verge of getting outright mad at him, really letting him know her two cents worth of opinion (which was rare for the shy girl) when the car interrupted her by making a few odd sounds and then quickly stopping.

"Shit," Winston said, managing to glide it over by a street lamp and then hitting the wheel. "I had a date with Tara tonight."

"Sorry," Erin apologized in a tone which seemed like a close enough fascimile but obviously was false nonetheless.

His nerves about shredded to the point of being a ticking time bomb of a mess, Winston Connelly got out of the car to examine what else had further gone wrong to screw up the day. As if Tara's constant criticism about his sexual technique wasn't bad enough and having to put up with a mother whom had hoisted his disapproving and guilt inducing friend on him, now his fancy new car was also turning traitor. Peering under the hood of the automobile, he could barely concentrate on what the problem was and only remembered where he was when he heard a door close signalling Erin had left the car too.

Irritated by her presence, blaming his bad luck on her, Winston slammed the hood down and looked around for a place where he could phone a garage. Nothing was available and he was close to losing his cool when he felt a soft, chubby hand gently clasp his arm.

"A patrol car should be by soon," she tried to comfort him and Winston found himself bothered by the kindness in her voice as much as the niceness of her touch. He had been so cruel and inconsiderate towards her. It would have been better for her to have just accepted that she was a part of his life he needed to leave behind, like the butterfly soon abandoned its chrysalis after emerging.

He looked at her sweet face and squirmed in his expensive shoes, wishing she would just similarly fly away.

When she did, her doing so made him feel unexpected sorrow.

He watched the big girl go to the hood of the car and sit down on it. He hated how his mind went to the worry that she'd hurt it with her weight. He had studied science all of his life and knew that the car could take it; just like he had known _her_ most of his life and was aware about how his thought would have hurt her. It belonged more to the crowd he traveled with now more than himself, some psychic residue left from his time spent around them. The popular crowd saw Erin only for her size so they had made him see her in the same way if only for an unkind moment. Her face tilted upwards to view the street lamp, Winston walked towards her and sat reluctantly by her side in penance. He could not raise his head, however, but stayed staring at the road until she began to talk about what had earned her interest so strongly.

"When we were kids I loved moths," Erin said and Winston finally raised his eyes to see a group of the insects flying around the street lamp's glow. "I loved their cute fuzzy bodies, their large black eyes and those crazy antenneas. They were so delicate to the touch too...I used to feel so bad when one would land on me and I hurt it without meaning to...they seem to be made of powder almost or moonlight...you can't hold their wings, the small ones. You can wound them so easily. People always loved butterflies but I loved moths because they all seemed so different in their ways and just as special. If it was only the night that accepted them well it never mattered: To me they were nighttime butterflies."

He listened to her words, feeling dead somehow; his thoughts were more on Tara waiting for him at the restaurant and how pissed off she would get if he kept her waiting for too long rather than silly musings on cloth eaters. Suddenly Erin turned and placed two fingers over his mouth. Winston looked at her in confusion, so lost in his present existence that it took him a moment to realize that the woman was instinctively adopting the gesture used on a past one. Expecting a lecture on the differences between moths and butterflies, Erin Smyth had tried to let her belief remain without his insistence of facts.

Only none had been coming.

He stared at her blankly, not knowing how to feel while he saw the pain in her eyes. The fingers were removed from his lips abruptly and she held herself, looking hopelessly out of place on the flashy sports car.

"I like caterpillars," Erin eventually remarked, turning away. "That strange way they feel when they crawl on your skin...the cute furry body and the pretty colors. I like their faces...sometimes I feel sad that they have to change. I don't see what was wrong with them to begin with."

He knew then what the woman was telling him. She was a moth. He had once been her caterpillar and then he had left her to become a butterfly like Tara Mitchell was. Anger flashed inside of him but a dull sort with little more power than the force of a monarch flapping its wings.

"Things change," Winston said. "They evolve to survive."

"Not always for the better," she grieved.

They saw the cop car approaching at the same time and then looked at each other in pain.

He wanted to tell her that he was sorry. He wanted to argue that it was always for the better, such evolutions, and that she would find other friends one day and forget about the boy whom had found his metamorphosis during one wild ride of a prom night. It wasn't her fault, he wanted to tell her; they just no longer _fit_ together. Instead he kept his mouth shut because the know-it-all had died inside of him to even struggle with the strength to say it.

"There's one thing I remember a boy teaching me about caterpillars..." Erin said as Winston hopped down. "He told me that you never know what a caterpillar will be: a moth or a butterfly. Maybe, in the end, they decide."

The memory came back full force, as did all of the times he had shared with the girl with the eyes that really were quite beautiful and had never looked at him as being any less for being what he was back then. And he thought of the night of the prom weeks back when he had made the decision to change and his time afterwards when he had discovered that being surrounded by the butterflies he had admired for so long was not quite so wonderful, or any less lonely, and that their wings seemed to contain far more weight than the chubby girl's whom saw herself simply as a moth.

He turned to look at her to say that a caterpillar hardly had the brain to make such lofty decisions and that nature, in truth, only threw it at them sometimes. That maybe, too, the final imago regretted the choice in the end, no matter if it had been decided or forced upon them.

Then the cop shut his door and he shut his mouth, swallowing words he suddenly felt to tired to say.

* * *

Outside of Erin's house, Winston parked the car the policeman had jump started on the highway. He could not look at the moth he had forsaken for a butterfly and only managed the strength to mumble a goodbye, feeling that it was the last one that would be shared between them. Oh, brief hellos and farewells would be exchanged in passing whenever he returned from college, Erin still staying where she was, and they unfortunately bumped into each other, Winston understood. But nothing would ever be this intimate again. Even though it was not even truly intimate itself but merely a chore he had been goaded into by his mother.

It was a tragic goodbye between them in a way: an embarrased parting between the teenagers they had become in stark contrast to so many warm "good nights" made when they had been safely inside of the cocoon of their youth.

He could offer her nothing better though. Winston Connelly felt as if he had evolved too far to ever speak her language again.

And then the stupid twit had to go grab the copy of "The Joy of Sex" beside him and elongate the awkward goodbye.

"ERIN!" he shouted in anger while she climbed out of the car and he did the same on his side.

They looked at each other over the vehicle before she walked towards him in seeming defeat. Angry at being kept in her company for longer than he had expected, he grabbed the book from her hand, an act which caused her to meet his eyes in willfull defiance.

"I was never smart as you, Winston Connelly," Erin stated boldly, as if gaining strength by the moon. "But there is one thing I know...if two people need a sex manual to help them make love then maybe they aren't really in love at all."

Hit below the belt in more ways then one, Winston Connelly was further struck when Erin stood on her toes and pulled his face down towards her own. She pressed her lips against his in an act which shocked him with its passion, shouted feelings that she had long kept secret but had finally decided to confess to him in a way he could not help but understand. Her lips were not as skilled as Tara's but they were far more daring and they were soft, needful and seeking, things Mitchell could never lower herself to be. Although, he knew he should back away from it, Winston surprised himself by falling into the kiss instead. His lips moved against hers and his tongue pushed forward, seeking entrance into her mouth and was admitted with enthusiasm. While her arms were at his back, holding him to her belly which was not unpleasant between them, his own moved hungrily to hers. She tasted sweet and like the candy she enjoyed eating and he was developing an appetite for her the longer the kiss lasted.

This was his Erin, after all. The same girl he had collected bugs with in summers long since passed and stared at the stars at only a few months ago. The not so little girl whom had been the person to save him from being completely alone and friendless. And yet she was someone _else_ too: A grown woman with apparently very adult desires of which he had been the center of for a long time without his knowledge.

Here, he had thought himself wise; lost in Erin's first kiss, Winston Connelly now realized he had been a fool all along.

Parting, Winston looked at his friend and truly saw her for the first time. He wanted to reach out to her, to take another kiss and know her better still, but she was backing slowly away from him and then running quickly towards the house on legs that didn't seem to care that she weighed twice as much as Tara Mitchell.

They carried her with twice as much grace as well.

Winston stood on the side of the road trying to catch his breath and fathom how the kiss of his past moth had moved him far more than his present butterfly's. 

Feeling like a moon bereft of its glow, he climbed almost clumsily into his car and slammed the sex manual on the seat where Erin had been sitting only minutes ago. It landed with too loud of a clap for it to have met only the cushion and the erstwhile astonomer then saw something else for the first time.

The book the woman had checked out from the library was Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." This she had left behind, presumably alongside the ones she had held of a life shared together. Or, at least, of a drive to the library shared with him before he headed off to college, Winston realized in regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I'm getting ready to watch "The Mandalorian" in a few minutes. I had kind of a bad day dealing with my OCD, depression and a bit of a bad experience in the morning. I need a cheer me up and I think Baby Yoda should do it.
> 
> Mando's relationship with him reminds me of the one between Marc Anthony and Pussyfoot in those old Warner Bros cartoons. Joe Dante once said that he saw a theater of moviegoers reduced to tears when the bull dog thought his kitty had been baked into a cookie and placed it onto his back.
> 
> There's something about seeing some big, tough thing falling for a cute, small, helpless thing that melts our hearts and makes for a good story.
> 
> Which reminds me...I think "The Mandalorian" was inspired by a certain hitman and his beagle too, besides the obvious "Lone Wolf and Cub" influence. Yes. I do believe that. A tough guy good with a gun and his sweet little companion? Sounds like the start of "John Wick" to me. Had to have had a hand in it. Yup. I really do believe that, Mr. Reeves.
> 
> Much love  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	3. The First Step of Respinning a Cocoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winston finally discerns what he is truly leaving behind.

Tara was gone by the time he reached the restaurant. She was not the type of girl whom waited if she did not need to and the valet said she had gone home on her own about ten minutes after having walked in the front door. The valet seemed to have remembered the svelte, gorgeous and irritable brunette very well, and though Winston knew the fact should have made him jealous or proud, he could feel only a dull apathy.

Driving home, the young man knew that if his girlfriend hadn't insisted on being seen in her own flashy car and had let him pick her up she could have, at least, waited it all out at her own home. Then she could have had her father to complain to and the two Mitchells would have enjoyed the wasted time saying how irresponsible and horrible that Winston Connelly boy was. In any case, that was probably what she had started doing when she arrived back at her house. In fact, daughter and father were still probably laying out his faults in glorious and minute detail.

Definitely not wanting to see Mr. Mitchell that night, Winston chose to drive back to his house and phone his girlfriend instead.

Passing by Erin's house, Winston glanced back at the window he knew belonged to her room. He had visited it often. In fact, it had only been a few weeks ago that he had gone to it to tell the girl that he was going to the prom with his dreamgirl. That had been when Erin had still been his friend, he knew.

And when he had still been a virgin.

Winston sighed and looked at the two library books lying side by side on the passenger side. They seemed to depict the vast differences between where his life was heading and where Erin's was staying. Parking the car in the garage, he grabbed the two books and decided to bring them both with him to his room, even though he didn't plan on reading one of them.

"Home so early?" his mother asked. "Didn't you have a date with Tara tonight?"

"The stupid car broke down while I was coming back from the library," he stated crankily.

"Well, I'm sorry abput that honey," Mrs. Connelly replied. "Just be grateful it happened with your _old_ friend and not your _new_ one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Winston stopped halfway on the staircase to turn and ask his mother.

"Erin's temperament is a bit more, shall we say, _calm_? There's no telling what Tara would have done."

Winston wanted to retaliate by remarking that Erin could be volatile in her own way, that she had kissed him out of the blue, when he realized that then he might have to confess that he had kissed her back and that his lips were still hungry and tingling strangely from the whole incident. So, instead he only mumbled a defeated agreement and turned and headed back to his room.

The boxes were still waiting for him; that hadn't changed, but looking at them and knowing what they were filled with, Winston wished that they were out in the garage waiting for the day that he left for college. Then he wouldn't have to look at them and feel guilty somehow.

Sitting on the bed and throwing the books at the bottom of it, he grabbed the phone and dialed the Mitchell residence with the same enthusiasm he had previously used for taking Erin to the library. His eyes fell again on the copy of Dickens' "Great Expectations" as Mr. Mitchell eventually answered the phone.

"Can I speak to Tara?" Connelly asked, half expecting for the man to tell him no. With a certain amount of dread, Winston found himself being put through to his girlfriend. If Mr. Mitchell was losing out on an opportuity to belittle him, it must only be because he believed his daughter could do a far better job. As the call was sent to the woman's room, Winston cringed as his lover answered it.

"Winston Connelly," she said in a voice filled with pure, seething rage, even more than when she had been handcuffed to a bed's headboard on prom night. "You better be calling from the hospital with both of your legs amputated to _DARE_ have the gall to phone me after what you did to me.

"Look, I can explain," Winston said. "My car broke down taking a friend to the library."

"What friend?"

"Erin."

"That blob that lives close to you?"

The man flinched again. "She's my neighbour, yeah."

"Didn't you use to date her or something?"

"No," Winston said, grabbing the copy of Great Expectations and studying the cover with its sketch of Pip and his childhood love, Estella. "We never dated. We were just friends."

"Well, thank God for that!" Tara Mitchell exclaimed. "I'd hate to think your tastes were that bad before I saved you."

"Yeah, _saved_ me," Winston said, staring at the book and frowning.

"So, you were at the library then. Did you get the..."

"I got it," the man said putting Dickens aside in favor of Comfort. Looking at the cover, he lay down with his back on the mattress.

"Great," Tara Mitchell said in obvious happiness. "Look...dad will be up for a while. Come to the house in around three hours. You resurrect that old bookworm inside of you and spend it learning all you need to from that thing, okay? Maybe tonight we can work some magic."

_"...there is one thing I know...if two people need a sex manual to help them make love then maybe they aren't really in love at all."_

"But Tara..." he started to protest.

The sound of a loud kiss blocked out his words before his girlfriend quickly said. "See you, Winnie."

Winston Connely cursed into the phone, where his lover had hung up, before he slammed the phone down and turned his attention on how to make the act of sex a bit more pleasurable for Tara and himself. Looking at the manual, Winston found himself getting hard often while he tried to memorize what he was supposed to do. But whereas before he might have experienced impatience to actually get the chance to put the knowledge to use on Tara Mitchell's wondetful little body, the former Astronomy club vice president couldn't stir any great feeling of anticipation inside of him. It almost felt like a chore he was required to do, like putting out the trash or cutting the grass.

He knew that half the things in the book his girlfriend would never be willing to actually do to him. She'd think it would smear her lipstick or get something undesirable under her manicured nails. Winston thought of Rhonda, the prostitute he had met on the night Tara and he had failed to show up for prom, and knew that she made her living from doing just those things depicted in the book, the very things that girls like Tara Mitchell refused to do.

Not that there was anything wrong with someone not wanting to but...

Still he wondered what Erin would or wouldn't be willing to do. She'd never be like Rhonda and be willing to have sex without love. He thought he knew her romantic sensibilities enough to know that. But would she be like Tara and scared of getting dirty in the process of making love? He remembered then when he had coerced the chubby little girl into digging for fossils in his mother's garden or searching for bugs in the park. Her plump fingers would come out filthy and with dirt caked underneath the nails. One time she had coaxed him into helping her bake Christmas cookies and she'd ended up with some of it on her when a food fight had broken out between them. But she hadn't cared about what ended up on her face or in her hair, Winston reminisced.

Winston flipped through the book again and looked at the many sexual acts listed. He then pictured it not being dirt beneath Erin's pretty nails or flour on her chin and he found his arousal growing almost as painful as the realization that the days of bug hunting and cooking with his childhood friend were now over.

* * *

"What the hell took you so long?" Tara Mitchell asked, pulling her boyfriend hastily inside through the window. "I thought you were going to stand me up for the second time tonight."

Winston stepped into the by now familiar bedroom and looked around, his mood not in anyway improved by a place he now associated with failure. "I was reading the damn book you asked me to get," he defended himself.

"I thought nerds like you _used_ to be were fast readers," she countered.

"Yeah, but commiting it to memory took a while, Tara. There have been quite a few centuries of people having sex. There was a lot to digest."

"Fine," the beautiful woman said. "Now you can put it to use."

Mitchell stood close to him and brought her lips to his, kissing him in a tantalizing way which usually helped to get his juices flowing. Winston felt it working again, his hands going automatically to her back. But something felt wrong about it tonight. Images from the book were flashing through his racing mind as he touched the girl in his arms, the girl whom had made him the envy of his peers before graduation. But once more the dirty thoughts were going to war with the memories he had of his nighttime butterfly and how the hole he had felt inside of himself in the last few weeks of unrivaled popularity matched the shape of her large wings.

Tara was persistent, however, while his thoughts remained distracted and brought him to the bed. She pulled him down on to her, the only thing separating their bodies her flimsy nightgown and his shirt and jeans. While his body was responding, Winston was completely aware that his heart was not. It was finally fully grieving for a living woman he had come to see as a friend whom he could easily exchange for an upgrade.

Until one kiss had shown him that he had only fooled himself with a lie. Nature often protected it's most precious creations by keeping their beauty simple and hidden.

"Wait," Winston Connelly said, and propped himself up and away from Tara Mitchell's inviting but bland lips.

"What is it now?" she asked in extremely vexed bewilderment. "Did you forget the condom?"

"No. I can't go through with this," he confessed.

"Having sex?" she asked in confusion. "It's not like we haven't done this before! We lost our virginity to each other, for crying out loud."

"Well, actually, I've never been sure if I lost it with you or a girl named Rhonda," Winston finally confided the secret he had harboured for quite a while. "I was drugged and..."

"Get off of me!" Tara snapped and kicked him away from both her and the bed.

Winston looked down at his girlfriend; every smooth curve of her body was displayed clearly to him from her hips to her perky breasts and nipples. Mostly any other man would see it as some paradise and long to return to the butterfly's embrace. But not him. Not now, Connelly finally understood.

She had blinded him with the beauty of her colors in the daytime. But in the nighttime those same shades did not look half as bright or alluring.

"Look, I like you, Tara, but I'm thinking if I need a sex manual to make you feel good then maybe you and I aren't really all that compatible."

"Argh! There's another one of those big words, Winston!" Tara groaned, sitting up. "I tell you...wait! This is because of you being around that blob, isn't it?"

"Erin," Winston corrected, anger claiming him for a moment.

"Whatever," she replied. "Lisa said that she heard from a friend of a friend that some guy she used to know saw you kissing her in front of her house. I said it was all a lie, that she must have kissed you...that was what it was, right? A little goodbye kiss?"

The man stared at the woman on the edge of the bed, knowing that this was the moment he could choose to stay a butterfly and thus accepted or crawl back into the cocoon that was waiting for him. "No, Erin kissed me. Not in goodbye but because she _loves_ me."

Mitchell winced and her expression stated her single overwhelming thought: _gross_.

"And I kissed her back. Because I love her too," he confessed further.

Tara paused for a second before breaking into laughter. "You're punishing me for hurting your silly male ego with that sex book. You can't be serious."

For the queen of popularity it was unfathomable and not an option inside of her mind to be discarded and unwanted. Her mind went immediately to another choice. However, when she continued to study the man's face for some proof to back her assumption she saw plainly her grave mistake. "No, no, no!" the teenager said. "You have me...what could you want with someone like her?"

"Everything," Winston answered and knew it was true. His history and feelings for his friend weren't some false illusion created by puberty or one wild and crazy night. Erin had been there for him when he was just a dweeb whom was such a big loser he had even come in second best to lead the Astronomy club.

And an even bigger loser the whole time to not see what had been underneath his nose and in front of his eyes for most of his life.

"Does she do things to you?" Tara asked in distaste and got to her knees before him. "Is that it? Because, I can do that if you _want_ me to..."

Her hands were on his fly and Winston knew that he could give in and let her do what she wanted to him, even if it was only because it would feel good, would to help soothe her mortally wounded pride and to keep his own charmed good standing, but he grabbed Tara's hands and pulled her to her feet instead. "No, Tara," he said. "It's because I _want_ her."

"Ha, all two tons of her," Mitchell stated.

Although it would have been easy to hate the high school princess then, Winston Connelly could see the pain in the young woman's eyes. Gently he cradled her haughty face in his hands. "We were good together but it would never have lasted. When I left for college...we would have found that out. You know that right?"

Tara Mitchell gazed at him sadly before she began to nod slowly. "Yes. I guess, I do."

"At least, now we can say our own goodbye and make it an honest one," the villain and hero of her prom night said.

The woman he had once sold and then rescued smiled prettily at him, her resentment, jealousy and anger fading. "Goodbye Winston Connelly. Thank you for giving me one very memorable night."

Winston smiled warmly in return. "And thank you for being my momentary butterfly, Tara Mitchell," he said before kissing her forehead in fond farewell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> In the room where my sleep study took place, there was this painting with several butterflies in white boxes. There were about sixteen of them, in rows of four. What fascinated me about them was that the last one on the top row was drawn half sideways; all the rest were shown so their wings were on display. But not that last one on the top row. I stared and stared at it, trying to figure out why it was the only one like that. I never could see the reasoning. But it was my favorite for the red of its wings and the black of its body.
> 
> I wonder if the recording will show me constantly gazing at it and the person studying me will be just as perplexed at what I am doing as I was at the artist's thinking.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


	4. A Caterpillar Regains a Lost Glow and a Moth Gets Her Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winston gives Erin both her night at the prom and himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here is the last chapter! Another multi chapter story completed in this series. I am happy with how it turned out. I think it is very sweet.

The night before Winston Connelly headed for college, he was almost as nervous as he had been on the night of the Prom.

Actually, that wasn't the truth.

He found himself even _more_ nervous than he had been on that particularly fateful night.

Now he held a certain perspective, Winston understood, that he hadn't possessed when he had been only a catterpiller, as Erin had painfully revealed to see him as. He had once been a butterfly, surrounding himself with beautiful flowers and other butterflies whom were were of the same sparkling breed. And while it had been exhilarating to fly with the revered, it had also been suprisingly hollow, he had discovered.

For he had forgotten whom he was and even butterflies did not emerge from the chrysalis after only one night.

Neither could they return to that same shed skin of their transformation and readorn it, Winston thought with bitter sadness. So what were his chances of succeeding or what could he hope to truly become? Some half transformed thing, neither butterfly nor the catterpiller nor moth?

And would Erin be willing to accept whatever it turned out to be?

For days beforehand, Winston Connelly had been busy asking himself this question as he busily prepared to head to college. But even more importantly as he readied himself for the night before.

* * *

At midnight, he had been rapping on Erin's window for five minutes before she finally answered it. His soul still rattling with fear, he was exhalted, relieved, frightened, excited and irritated when she finally came and knelt by the sill. The possibility that following their kiss his best friend might have actually gone out and started living a life without him had never really occurred to him. It had, though, quite agonizingly during the duration of his waiting and when Erin opened the window, he couldn't help but ask, "Where were you?" in exasperation in order to help release some of his fear.

"The bathroom," she stated and Winston hastily blushed, remembering that he had overlooked that as an option.

She was staring at him in her own wild mixture of emotion. Love (and this he could read quite plainly now,) fear, hope, curiosity and her own annoyance were present. But still the unspoken warmth of heart she held for him overpowered all the others and Winston cursed himself that he had never seen it or the person it was harboured within before that one stolen yet reciprocated kiss. Still, he watched her eyes taking in his attire and the way that she obviously liked what she saw but didn't say so.

"You like the tux?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said reaching out and touching the black lapels of his jacket. "It's better than the white one."

He had known that it had been her favorite. When he had brought her along with him to choose a tuxedo for Prom, she had tried to discourage him from the half white one, that he had eventually gone with, for the black one, that he was currently wearing.

Now, knowing of her love for him, Winston wondered how she had managed any of it: his constant fawning over Tara, his telling her that the woman was going to the Prom with him and then agreeing to help him pick out what to wear, even if he hadn't listened to her. It all must have wounded her more than he had ever realized, and he wondered why, when he was so smart, he could never notice something that was right in front of him if there wasn't a piece of glass in between them. Apparently God had only made him be able to stare down microscopes or look through telescopes to see until one kiss had finally opened his eyes.

Then again, the only thing that caterpillers could see clear enough was the telling of night from day, Winston Connelly mused and any creature had their own specific limitations to face and abide by.

"Are you taking Tara someplace?" she asked, letting go of the lapel, almost as if in thinking of Tara Mitchell she was being reminded to let go of him once more too.

"Not really," he replied. "I'm taking _you_."

She looked at him, startled in the moonlight. Her large eyes became even larger and her mouth parted in shock. He thought of a hundred different things that he wanted to do with those lips and pushed the thought away on the promise of there being time enough for all that and the glorious steps to make before after and in between.

"Me?" she asked in confusion. "Where are you taking me?"

"Where I should always have taken you and not Tara," Winston stated. "To the Prom."

When the overweight girl began to cry he was not surprised. Seeing her finally, being present for the years it had taken for her to become his very own nighttime butterly, he understood her now as if she had been the true object he had been studying all throughout his years and not silly things such as stars and planets, arachnids and insects.

* * *

He led Erin not to the High School they had both attended but to the backyard of his house where they had spent their childhood and puberty staring at an ebony sky. He had made it to resemble some collision between a Prom and their own sacred and shared past. The moon, however, was their mirrorball, magnificent, full and hanging in the sky, surrounded by a thousand stars which filled in for the far more tacky and less beautiful tissue paper decorations to be found in a rented hall or auditorium.

Eyes fixed on Erin, Winston smiled as she walked onto the grass and took in his effort with a happiness and surprise that made the time spent on it more than worthwhile.

"You did this?" she asked.

"Yeah," he nodded.

A table was laid out with a punch bowl and food and music was playing from a record player hidden behind a few cardboard cutouts of a band. But it was the familiar sight of the sheet on the ground which caught his friend's attention and the telescope before it.

"I got you some things too," he quickly added, grabbing three boxes from off of the grass. "Open them in order."

Erin took the first box and removed the lid quickly, clearly fearful that if she took too long his hands would become tired from holding the other boxes. "A corsage," she said, taking out a rose of deepest red with a spattering of green leaves and baby's breath.

"I won't put it on until you're done with the last box," Winston informed and quickly handed her the second.

Opening it with the same speed as she did the first, his date quickly saw the item that had been the catalyst for his misguided transformation.

"The owl magnet," she said with a small smile.

"I hope you don't mind that its second hand," he commented.

She held it to her chest. "Second hand things are wonderful," Erin remarked. "It means they have a second chance at being loved if they weren't before."

Knowing she was no longer referring only to the wise old owl, Winston's heart glowed warmly as he held out the final box to her. "Here. I'll hold it this time while you open it."

Plump fingers took the edge of the box gently and began to lift it and Winston found himself wondering what those same fingers would feel like on his body instead and why everything suddenly turned sexual for a guy when he was interested in a girl. It was crazy and stupid but his heart was now racing as Erin pulled out the dress inside of the box and looked at it in wonder.

"It's beautiful," she said, tears entering her eyes as she stared at the dress of pale pink and its simple beauty.

"It's silk," the boy said. "I chose the color because you were always telling me how Molly Ringwald's dress looked bad at the end of that one film...But you always look pretty in pink and its like Marion's white one from Raiders...I knew that you always liked that one..."

She blushed a shade to match the corsage at the realization that he had remembered her random comments on movies they had watched together.

"I remember, Erin," he whispered. "Even if I hadn't split with Tara, I would have always remembered you. I could never have forgotten...I would have seen something and thought of you. Even if I hadn't wanted to."

She looked at him, obviously touched and then back to the dress in her trembling hands. "Where can I change?"

"How about behind the bushes, like when we were kids?" he asked, pointing to a row of thick shrubs.

"Promise not to look?" she pleaded to which he nodded.

Winston Connelly watched her run past him and towards the hedge, getting to her knees to ensure that, even if he didn't keep his promise, he could not see anything anyway. He made glances in her direction so that her effort would not be in vain, liking the way the moon shone its light on her pale shoulders and the soft swell of her breasts he saw when she had moved out of her cotton nightshirt and was putting on the dress of silk.

It fit; of course, he had always known that it would, though. Aware that he was in love with Erin now, he could remember anytime he had touched her innocently or simply the nearness of her. Scientist that he was, he had easily translated this into measurement and given the dressmaker the right ones to alter the dress he had found. There had been few available in her size that had been pretty and he wanted Erin to feel as beautiful as he knew that she was.

Still, when she came out from the bushes, she seemed terribly shy and embarrassed. She walked gracefully forwards but when she stopped infront of him she was her usual self deprecating self as he placed the rose corsage on her. "I hate my arms," she said. "I feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man with boobs," she sighed.

He almost laughed because of the imagery but smiled down at her with the affection he felt. "You look beautiful."

"Really?" she asked without looking at him, apparently afraid if she did she might see that he was lying.

Gently, Winston took her chin in his hand and raised it until their eyes met. "Honestly."

She smiled at him again, her eyes catching the moonlight and stars and practically glowing.

"Would you like to dance?" he asked then, wanting an excuse to hold her.

She looked frightened, fear joining the stars within her eyes. "I don't know how," she confessed.

"Simple," Winston said, rushing over to turn the record player on. "You just follow my lead and step on my feet a lot."

"I'll hurt you," she groaned.

"You're in your barefeet," he countered before taking hold of her hand and waist and starting to move her slowly across the grassy ballroom floor.

Mr. Soul was telling of the many things that a boy did when he was in love and Winston Connelly agreed with most of them while he held Erin's warm and satin clad body next to his. Her breasts were full and felt nice pressed against him but, to his surprise, so did her belly. It wasn't flat like Tara's but it was soft for the fact that it wasn't and he enjoyed the way it felt. Hesitantly, Erin found her way and Winston couldn't help but kiss the shoulder he had admired in the moonlight.

"Is this really happening?" she asked with a shiver in the warm night. "I'm afraid I'll wake up any minute."

"You're not dreaming," Winston said. "But I was for a while. I thought I was something I wasn't."

"But you weren't," Erin said in solace but with a touch of sadness too. "I always knew that you were a butterfly, Winston. Even when we were young. It was only a matter of time before you figured it out and everyone else saw it too. And...and you always loved Tara and wanted to be with her. I just wish that you didn't need to leave me to do it...but you told me once, long ago, that butterflies and moths don't socialize. I should have remembered that. So after this dance...if you want to fly away from me again..."

Winston quickly parted from her to place two fingers over her lips. "Don't say it," he whispered. "I don't want to, Erin."

She looked hopeful but filled with the doubt she always reserved for herself.

Taking the sleeve of her dress, Winston rubbed the material between the same two fingers that had just been at at her mouth. "Silk only comes from moths. A butterfly might be beautiful but its beauty is ephemeral. It leaves nothing behind when it dies and gives us little but something to admire while it is here. But a moth gives us silk. And not only is that beautiful, but it lasts too. A silk blanket outlives any made from any other material, just as long as it's treated well. And a fiber of silk is stronger than a fiber of steel. That is the gift of a moth to the world, Erin."

The piece of silk had fallen from his fingers and he found his hands holding her face instead, her tears falling down her soft cheeks.

"And your love, as precious and durable as silk, is your gift to me, my own nighttime butterfly," Winston told her before beginning to savour the tears that were trapped between her lips.

Sharing another kiss, he felt it ripple through his body like the powerful and fragile wings of some prehistoric insect. Her body was cradled closely to his and she was trembling as they parted. "I love you, Winston," she cried into his chest. "I always loved you but I never thought..."

"You deserved me?" he said with a laugh. "I don't deserve you for almost leaving without seeing how much you mean to me."

"You're still going," she said, more a statement than a question.

"Yes," he replied. "I have to. I need to become an astonomer. You know it's been my dream since we were young."

Erin's arms tightened around him, obviously pleased to know that he was no longer going to become a Doctor.

"But look here," Winston said, after kissing her on the forehead and dragging her to the telescope. Pulling her to her knees beside him, he touched the instrument, placing her hand on it too and smiled. "I want you to have this. I sold the car and bought another telescope for my room at the dorm. That way both of us can look at the sky and it'll be like we're together...under the same heaven, right back on this blanket."

"Oh Winston," she cried, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him again.

Their bodies pressed together again but this time more intimately it seemed, the kiss grew more urgent. Winston Connelly felt himself growing hard as Erin's lips easily managed to cause the passion inside of him that always felt both feigned and forced with Tara. He had to pull himself back before he lowered her on to the blanket and took things in a direction his lover might not be ready for.

It proved even more difficult when Erin's hand went to his pants and explored his arousal in her own need.

"Give me something to remember when we're looking at the stars together," Erin whispered into his ear. "Leave me with that too."

"Are you sure?" he asked, his hands sliding over her smooth back.

"Yes," she consented shyly but with a strong hint of want at its edge and core.

Winston Connelly laid his nighttime butterfly tenderly down under the stars which they had marvelled at in their childhood and began to make love to her in their adult state.

The moon and stars watched the act of love but did not interrupt, preferring to watch the two young lovers as they had often gazed at it, with silence and in awe. Winston slowly explored the body he had long been familiar with in a way devoid of desire. Now the desire came free and unbridled and he found Erin's hands far more bolder than he had could ever have hoped for. She longed to memorize him with her eyes and the tips of her fingers, the surface of her lips and tongue, knowing he would soon be many miles away from all of them. There was not a part of him that she did not seem to wish to become familiar with, as he did with her, and slowly the clothes were removed one by one and placed to the side, even the dress of silk. When Erin had spread her wings and he was inside of her, Winston witnessed the initial look of discomfort on her sweet features and found his arousal heightened when it passed to one that betrayed she had come to accept the swollen part of him inside of her unstretched tunnel with joy and pleasure. That pleasure was given and received like the admiration of nighttime butterflies.

His mouth and hands full with his friend in the past and lover in the present, the result of an accumulation of years and an ever steady process of mistakes, learning and finally triumph. The whole act was the latter for them both, Winston understood. There was no manual needed. They were there for one another and the event was made better because they understood and loved each other. It was something they had not learned from a book; they found it in one another's bodies and the souls and hearts contained in both.

Lying in a sweet embrace afterwards, glowing like the moon, Winston stroked Erin's upper arm as she kissed his naked and sweat covered shoulder. Meanwhile, Sam Cooke was singing about the moon which was hanging above them, still watching.

"We can look at the stars," the future astonomer mused. "And we can know that the distance between them and the earth is greater than the one between us. 4.24 light years...Did you know that there is actually 81,000 years between Alpha Centari, the closest star to us and earth. It would..."

Winston Connelly felt Erin place two chubby fingers on his lips but the sensation only lasted a second, far shorter than a trip to the closest star or any other time they had ever rested there.

"You know what?" she stated, suddenly taking away her fingers from his mouth. "You go right ahead Winston Connelly...you tell me anything you want to."

Erin lowered her lips to where her fingers had been and Winston felt her confess with a kiss that she would always love him no matter what he was, butterfly, moth or caterpillar, on this night or any night after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Keanu;
> 
> I hope you would like this. The Night Before is an amusing little film but this certainly played it a little differently with how Winston's transformation might not have been ideal for himself or for others. 
> 
> To be honest, I loved Winston in this film but I prefer your look in the eighties when you were a little scruffier (River's Edge) or shaggier (Bill & Ted) than when you were clean cut. Oddly enough, I like them both equally in the nineties (Feeling Minnesota compared to Point Break) it's just the eighties that finds me preferring one look over the other. And that leaves me confused. :/
> 
> I get excited when that Portugese side of you comes out or the Asian or Hawaiian but without the overly "exotic" beautiful aspect. I don't fancy you in Little Buddha very much. You're too thin and made up. I like you skinny but I prefer you with more weight. You're too skinny for the first Matrix too. Cute but skinny. I know it's because you weren't exactly feeling great though. But I still want to go and feed you cookies.
> 
> Your weight was criticized for Chain Reaction and Last Time I Committed Suicide but you looked perfect to me there; I had no problem with it.
> 
> Back to this story, I have my own Estella. Only she was a boy called Jordan. I mention him in some of these because he was such a huge part of my life. I had two boys I loved in my childhood. The first was a boy named Morgan, whom adored me. The second was a boy Jordan, whom hardly seemed to even notice me.
> 
> So why was it Jordan that I loved with my whole heart and soul and not Morgan?
> 
> It wasn't because he didn't love me. If he *had* loved me, I would have been the happiest girl in the world. After my mom died I tried to get in contact with him and it was strange and horrible.
> 
> I asked my friend what was going on and she intentionally gave me bad advice, I think. Either that or she was honestly ignorant. But anyway, she made it seem like I was only looking to be shown that despite being fat I could be loved and had only chosen someone from my childhood to help do it. She was wrong. I loved Jordan. I often wished that I didn't. 
> 
> I'd never contacted him before because I knew it would never work out (at seven years old I knew that) and I didn't want the love I had for him to be tainted. But after mom died, I was in so much pain and my OCD was so bad. I finally did.
> 
> Anyway, the friend with the bad advice, also went on about how her husband was skinny but loved her. It was like some prize she was bragging about, for a fat girl to get a skinny guy. But that wasn't what I was after either. I love Harold Ramis at any weight he was. And I love you too, Keanu. And I loved Jordan too. He was overweight also by that time, something my friend had never even considered.
> 
> But I don't love Jordan now. After what happened it's gone. The thing I feared came about worse than I could ever have imagined and whenever I think of him the love is gone.
> 
> And that feels almost worse sometimes than what he did to me.
> 
> I always remembered this one time by the swing set on the playground at our school. Jordan and his brother were talking to my sister and I and I stayed pretty well quiet and just watched him, feeling this ache in my heart which had been beating for about eight years by then.
> 
> I loved him so much. 
> 
> And now there is nothing and I don't know why. 
> 
> And I'm crying as I type this because I feel sorry for that little girl loving that boy and not feeling worthy of him. I want to hug her. But I am her...I'm still that child even if I don't love Jordan anymore...
> 
> So I just end up hugging myself instead. Because the love may be gone but I am still here. Something I can't say for the boy that I loved.
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3


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